Uncritical Critics offer Critiques

This week, we saw a global collection of outlets misled their readers in lock-step: Huff Post, the Telegraph, Salon, The Intercept, and just about everyone else ran headlines about the US voting against a UN resolution condemning the death penalty for LGBT people. The UN resolution, “The question of the death penalty”, as one could guess, seeks to end the use of the death penalty. The resolution does add condemnation of the outrageous punishments regarding “persons with mental or intellectual disabilities, persons below 18 years of age… pregnant women…” and people accused of “apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations.” Every headline above focused on only one of those categories, likely angling for clicks from readers ready to blindly rage over the Trump Administration’s every move. Now, if you read us, you know we’re not shy about expressing outrage over the actions of the orange president. But we like reserving the outrage for when it’s actually warranted. You’ll notice most articles failed to note that in 2014 the Obama Administration abstained from a similar UN resolution with the same title. The U.S. continues to use the death penalty and will oppose international efforts that challenge it. The Obama and Trump Administrations both pushed back at the UN. There is so much real stuff that should outrage us, we don’t need to make stuff up.